Broken Heroes
by Neko Kuroban
Summary: Noriko knows that she will never be normal.


Notes: This was written with movie assumptions, before I read the novel.

**Broken Heroes (On a Last Chance Drive)**

Dawn rose glassy-orange on the island. You remember this, remember the slow way light touched the fog until there was a flash of green on the horizon. Then the sky had blazed, and you had never been so grateful to see the sun come up in your life.

On the day of the promised class trip, you looked out the window to see the soft rose dusk, the same subtle pink as the eiderdown on your bed, and thought, perhaps bizarrely: _sunrise on a school bus_. You had giggled then - you liked the poetry of it - and shared it with Megumi.

"Noriko!" She had exclaimed. "That would make a cool song name! You should _totally_ write that down." She leaned across your lap to peer out of the window and swiftly brought up her Polaroid camera. "It's so pretty!"

_Megumi is a good friend_, is what you thought in those minutes. _But I wish... I wish..._ There was something indefinable about her, about her need to capture

(_Shinji Shuya Noriko herself_)

everything in film to prove it happened, that used to get under your skin, something that makes you flush and squirm about now.

You don't mind remembering how she looked - laughing and happy, a dimple appearing in her left cheek - or your reaction. "I will!" You promised. "I brought my diary along."

There was no diary to write in that evening, of course, only the feel of a cold metal band beneath your terrified fingers

(_and oh God oh God the fear_)

and the overwhelming scent of pine needles and ocean and blood - you'll never forget. It's been two months and you cannot forget. You never will.

**X X X X X**

You are strong.

Shuya tells you this, but it seems so strange coming from him, even as you're under the doctor's care, after you escaped - it never feels as much like survival as it does escape.

But you're alive, and Shuya's alive, and Megumi's not, Shinji's not, not even the girls who tormented you - Tendo, Yahagi, and Fujiyoshi - survived, not Oki, not... oh, God.

It's a good thing the doctor's an understanding man; he rubs your back and cleans your cuts even after you vomit on his shoes. He asks if you want to keep the fragment of a bullet, though, and you can't say no, you're crying so hard.

**X X X X X**

You're never really hungry anymore, you realize when you and Shuya are in Umeda Station. It's accepted that you can't stay in Osaka any longer; you can feel the police at the station watching you, even in spite of your steps to hide your face. You don't doubt that government officials have been flashing around photographs of you and Shuya.

You checked the law while you were at the doctor's home, carefully clearing his browser's cache when you were finished: **All minors are subject to habaes corpus**. You had assumed it would just be for those involved in the Battle Royale Act, but anyone under twenty is completely under the government's jurisdiction. _Paternalism_ was the Dictator's official designation. How had you not known this? School had been intermittent at best, constantly interrupted by whatever dramatic upheaval was of the day. You wiped away the blood and hid the _knife_ behind your back the day you watched a kid _your_ age stab your teacher, of course lessons were inconsistant, but surely this would have come up before.

Unless it was deliberate.

Umeda Station feels alien. Yes, there are police everywhere, but you haven't seen so many people gathered into one place in weeks. Girls and young women buoyed on their (dreams of) designer goods, of the few expensive things that aren't prohibited by the government; little kids, giggling and fighting over this toy or that from their knapsacks; salarymen with greasy, slicked back hair and Seiko watches, and the knowledge that out there, fifty classes just like yours are being nominated for the Battle Royale Act.

"Do you want anything?" Shuya's grip tightens on your hand, and you realize he's just as lost as you are.

"Yeah." You know you need to eat. "Are you hungry?"

You used to like soba noodles, but the ones that come in the shoddy plastic container are bland and tasteless, like the rations had been on the island (two precious bottles of fresh water, meat, bread, and a package of campfire rice, all tucked neatly inside a paper bag).

**X X X X X**

You're starting to forget the last time you clasped your hands in prayer.

Your teacher might have drawn you surrounded by an aura of golden light, just like a saint, but you are no one's angel. The dark parts of your mind are all too dark, even worse than they were that first night - then you still had hope that it would all be okay, that something would happen over the night to spirit you away.

Silly little girl.

There's no god machine.

**X X X X X**

You called your mother before you left. She had been terse and cold, but her words twisted with fury, bit off at the end. _How could you do this to us?_ You keep replaying the conversation in your head: her rejection, the harsh tone of disapproval, when she told you that your little brother had been taken by the police.

There was nothing left for you in Japan.

Mom had made that abundantly clear.

**X X X X X**

The feeling of being filthy is constant.

You wrap yourself in the headscarves and long, shapeless garments common to women here, and you _still_ find sand caught in unpleasant places. Clean water is rare here, and not wasted on bathing. The capital city is too dangerous to go, even for a shower, and, closing your eyes against the sun's dazzling glare, you reflect on how lovely it would be if the starving ten-year-olds could have clean water _and_ a swimming pool.

You know it's your guilt that's making you feel this way, and not need for a bath. At the home of Minamura's aunt, who promised to help you in any way she could, you scoured and scoured your skin until it was blotched crimson. It stays that way for nearly a week, and there was no one to notice, except for Shuya.

**X X X X X**

It's not about the sex, with Shuya. You don't talk about it, never planned for it to happen, but his fingers are gentle and his lips linger just above that damned collar, and, oh, he _knows_.

"I love you," he whispers one night, and you barely react.

Isn't this what you had been waiting for? When you were a little girl, your girl dolls always fell in love with your lone boy doll or else one of your elder brother's discarded action figures, and they were always married in the pretty lace dress that one of the dolls came with and a paper towel veil, at sixteen. There was no way to demand a do-over, no other chances, only one true love for each doll. And perhaps because of because of this, perhaps because he knows, perhaps because you're so young and you feel so old, perhaps because you really do love him, perhaps because you're now thousands of miles away from home - not that home is anywhere you wish to return to - hiding from the government in a war-ravaged country, you tell him you love him, too.

**X X X X X**

After the conversation with your mother (which hurt even more than the bullet that clipped your right arm), you don't try to contact anyone. It's too dangerous, even on a secured line. The only effort you make is when you start absently writing notes to your best friend. It's horrifying, but the pattern remains exactly like the little notes you used to write her in class: _Dear Megumi-chan..._

She used to slip things into your desk or your bag - photographs, mostly. The day before she died, she snuck the Polaroid of the sunrise into your diary, on the page where the day's date came printed.

Beneath it, she had written: _sunrise on a school bus. _(It's cliche and typical and absolutely, absolutely wonderful.)

**X X X X X**

His lips are pliant beneath yours. "I want..." And you don't know what you want, but you barrel onwards anyway. "I want to make sure no other kids our age feel like this."

"There are other survivors. From other Programs, from other prefectures..."

You ask for a number, and he offers something up, no more than an estimate. It's still too much, and, when you multiply it by forty, as many students as were in your class in September, you feel sick, but it's a start.

It's enough to fight back.


End file.
